Washington Wrap

By Joel Roberts

Updated on: June 12, 2003 / 12:35 PM
/ CBS

Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker and Steve Chaggaris of The CBS News Political Unit have the latest from the nation's capital.If He Can Make It There: White House political guru Karl Rove spoke at a "warm-up" lunch at the swanky 21 restaurant in Manhattan yesterday to jazz contributors for the June 23 fundraiser for Bush-Cheney '04.

According to the New York Post, Bruce Blakeman, one of 100 fundraisers at the event said that Rove believes that "New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are all in play" for President Bush in 2004. "We want to play in the other guys backyard. The idea is to lock up our states early and go after non-traditional Republicans," another attendee told the Post. He said that Rove also talked about the need to woo union members, Latinos and women.

The lunch was attended by New York's Republican Gov. George Pataki and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was reportedly out of town. Other than the elected officials, New York Republicans who have pledged to raise at least $50,000 for the Bush reelection campaign got a seat at Tuesday's event.

The New York funder is the first of seven big events featuring the President and/or the Vice President and Laura Bush in the last week of June to try to raise a big "stash of cash" by the June 30 FEC filing.

Candidate Or Author?: Hillary's not the only politician leading two lives. It seems one of the more popular ways for the presidential candidates to get their messages out is through your local bookstore. A few of the Democratic candidates are currently writing books slated to come out later in the year, reports The Hill newspaper.

Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., is working on a yet untitled book about his career as a trial lawyer. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., with historian Douglas Brinkley, is co-writing a book on his Vietnam experience titled "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War." Also, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., will look back at his 2000 VP run in a book, co written with his wife Hadassah, called "An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah's Personal Notes on the 2000 campaign."

Rep. Dick Gephardt looks like he'll let his 1999 book, "An Even Better Place: America in the 21st Century," stand for the time being..

Speaking of notes, the candidate famous for his extremely detailed logs, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., isn't turning his notes into a book. Instead, he's releasing a CD titled "The Bob Graham Charisma Tour 2004," according to the Miami Herald.

The album features a variety of songs including a country tune about his famous "workdays" called "I've Done Every Job, Man" and a love song about his wife titled "My Beautiful Adele."

While the sometimes a cappella performer doesn't sing on the CD, he has memorized some of the lines from the album and is using them at his campaign events, resulting in mixed reviews from those in the crowd.

The Herald reports that on Sunday, after a speech on the Iraq war, Graham burst into song.

"You've -- got -- a friend in Bob Gra-ham -- that's what everybody's say-in-- . . . All across the good ol' USA," Graham sang to an initially silent crowd. Eventually the audience started clapping, laughing and eventually, hooting and hollering, the newspaper said.

Graham continued, as his number was being carried live by C-SPAN: "From the Atlantic to the Pacific, we all say -- he's terrific. That's why -- America needs Bob Gra-ham -- to-day."

Oops: Common Cause President Chellie Pingree may have violated campaign finance laws in her 2002 Senate campaign in Maine. The Boston Globe reports that Pingree's supporters received a letter encouraging them to circumvent contribution limits by funneling money to her campaign through third-party groups.

The letter provided by Pingree to the Globe said, "If you have already given Chellie Pingree for Senate the maximum contribution ($1,000 for the primary and $1,000 for the general election) following are some other ways to continue your financial support to the campaign."

Several campaign finance lawyers concurred that this looks like a violation of the law. William Canfield the incoming chair of the ABA's election law committee said, "the hypocrisy, as gross as it was for her to send this out, is that Common Cause would hire someone as it's President who has publicly solicited soft money contributions."

Pingree's attorney, Marc Elias, said the rules the campaign operated under "are subject to interpretation." And Derek Bok, chairman of Common Cause, said he expects the FEC to find "no major flouting of the rules that would cast doubt on her integrity."

Oh, That Jack Quinn: A report in the June 6 Washington Wrap on Democrats hedging their bets for president by giving to more than one candidate cited the Center for Responsive Politics study that former White House counsel Jack Quinn had given to three candidates. Quinn's office says that Quinn has given money to John Kerry and Dick Gephardt, but not to Howard Dean, as the report stated.

It was a Jack Quinn from Olney, Maryland, who gave to the Dean campaign, not the Jack Quinn of Connecticut Avenue and Marc Rich fame, whose partner Ed Gillespie is slated to be the next chair of the Republican National Committee.

He doesn't seem like your average Meetup.com kind of guy, but we thought maybe he was returning to his Mo Udall roots.

Quote of the Day: "This is really embarrassing. I just forgot our state governor's name, but I know that you will help me recall him." --Arnold Schwarzenegger, a potential Republican gubernatorial candidate in California if the petition to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis gets on the ballot. (AP)